Grass Pillow

“A journey,” the Japanese idiom suggests, “grass pillow.” Yet what rests on grass never fully settles. It only pauses; it allows the body to forget, for a moment, its demand for stability.

In this exhibition, painting is understood in a similar way. It does not function as a clear account of what is seen; instead, it lingers as a trace of perception itself. What appears on the surface carries less the certainty of an object than the density of a moment in which seeing has yet to resolve into meaning.

One year ago, Kiim encountered Kusamakura (Grass Pillow, 1906) by the Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki and recognized a strong affinity with the sensibility underlying her practice. Sōseki writes from a position where the world resists easy explanation. “The world is not easily endured,” he suggests, turning away from narrative resolution toward another mode of attention—one grounded in appearance, before things are compelled to signify.

The exhibition develops from this sensibility, foregrounding a way of seeing that holds the world at a slight remove. It begins with a simple shift in emphasis: the question is less about what is seen, and more about how seeing takes place.

The artist has developed her work through “carved painting,” alongside painting and drawing. Through a repetitive process of applying and removing material, forms remain in flux, continually altered by the conditions of perception. Oscillating between clarity and uncertainty, the works create a space of visual wandering, resisting fixed narratives and instead offering moments of pause, suspension, and quiet observation.

This exhibition explores the point at which poetry and painting come into being—the balance between distance and sensation in relation to the world.